


Sunshine and life, such that it is

by Sweatie



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, F/F, NSFW Art
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-22 15:34:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14311815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sweatie/pseuds/Sweatie





	Sunshine and life, such that it is

**Author's Note:**

  * For [havisham](https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/gifts).



Hello, World.

Solitude doesn't suit many people, and despite what a number of those people believe, Linyu is still people. She sighs as she puts her feet up on an uncovered part of the console, and watches the planet pass by down below.

Her station is more of a prison than a workplace—a punishment for daring to get grievously injured doing her job and forcing the company to buy her half a body. 

She sucks synthetic coffee through her teeth, glowering.

Purple and yellow clouds swirl together on the planet and Linyu wonders whether her robotic parts would let her breathe it in without dissolving.

RUNNING INITIALIZATION PROCEDURES...

PROCESS CHECK: 04%

She dreams, sometimes, about how things would have gone if she had just died in the accident. If instead of chewing her up and spitting her out, the machine had taken her head and crushed her skull in its metal jaws. Her old limbs still send her phantom signals which overlap with those from her mechanical parts in the touch version of double vision.

PROCESS CHECK: 100% COMPLETE.

PROCESS START: 1 OF 54.

There are always an infinite number of tedious forms to complete: health and safety, supply requests, pay requests, maintenance requests, but nothing involving talking to another human being. She'd babbled like a lunatic at the last person who came to check her wiring, and she thinks they're likely to send someone else the next time.

"Someone specialized in isolation therapy," she mumbles to herself, upending the last of her coffee onto her tongue. It tastes nothing like the real thing.

Her day finishes alone, and she wants to scream.

But what would be the point, when she's the only one to hear?

PROCESS START. 54 OF 54 COMPLETE.

There's a message on the console when she pulls herself out of her cot in what passes for morning on the space station. She saves it for after she's brewed a brand new cup of You Absolutely Will Believe It's Not Coffee—any correspondence is a treat these days—pressing the button to play it as she tries to think of what routine check-in she's forgotten.

A bright and cheery jingle blares from the speakers, and she scrambles to cut them off, slamming half a dozen random buttons before she hits the right one and the music stops.

 _Fuck!_ she thinks, and rubs at her ears.

A second later, a laugh peals out from the speakers. She checks the volume control. It's still muted.

"Have you considered masturbation?" a voice chimes in, feminine and rich with amusement. "I hear that idle hands are your devil's play things. Though you might have to change the setting on your fingers."

Linyu taps in manual overrides, but the console doesn't respond to any of them.

"Oh, I disabled all of those," the voice informs her. "I don't want you to kill me by mistake."

That makes her pause. She uses the moment to take a breath, and settle herself. 

The most logical thing she can think of is that she has finally gone insane, and her need for company and proper coffee has resulted in her inventing a thoroughly obnoxious phantom to tell her to fuck herself. But that she hasn't also invented tolerable coffee in her descent into madness tells her that is—while logical—unlikely.

She tries, without much hope, breaking the safety lock and twisting the handle on the emergency shutdown.

"Come on, you didn't think I'd allow _that_? How would you make your caffeine beverage!"

"It's coffee," she mumbles, and places her forehead on the unresponsive console.

The voice laughs again. "The chemical composition says otherwise, sweetie."

What she should do, she knows, she absolutely does, is try to work out who it is who's fucking with her. Who has enough free time and the inclination to bother. But the thing is, it's kind of nice to hear someone else, even someone... well. Like this.

"I did your paperwork."

She lifts her head. She blinks, slowly. "What?"

"Is it still paperwork when no one's used paper in a thousand years? I guess so, otherwise it would just be 'work' and it's so _not_ work work." The voice pauses for a moment. "I think, hang on."

NETWORK SEARCH "PAPERWORK DEVELOPING ETYMOLOGY": INITIATING 0%

"You're... using the station to search the internet?"

NETWORK SEARCH "PAPERWORK DEVELOPING ETYMOLOGY": COMPLETE

"I don't see any other way to find out." The voice sounds miffed. "Hmm, a lot of people have strong opinions on this."

"On what?"

"Paperwork!"

Of course.

She doesn't ask who the voice is. _What_ the voice is. What she does ask, is for the voice's name.

SUNSHINE

Sunshine is always around. She doesn't shut up. Everything Linyu does receives commentary. But what she does has changed: Sunshine takes care of all the tedious things, which she should care about, she knows she should, but not having to type up lists of minutiae for people who will never look at it anyway is more of a relief than she could have imagined.

Now, she watches ancient historical dramas, and bickers with Sunshine.

"Why don't hey have sex?" Sunshine has a preoccupation.

Linyu sips at her coffee. It's coffee now, because otherwise she couldn't disagree with Sunshine. "They would have to get undressed, and I don't think they have that much time." The costumes in the dramas make all the characters look like they've been hired as replacements for clothes horses.

"Why don't _we_ have sex?" A vexing preoccupation.

Sighing, Linyu returns her focus to the drama, watching one of the characters flick open their fan and cover their mouth with it as they confess their interests in someone other than their betrothed.

The screen changes to a pixelated rendition of something relevant to Sunshine's topic of conversation.

Linyu wrinkles her nose.

"Not your thing? Boo. How about… PROCESSING.. . this!"

A bark of something close to a laugh escapes from Linyu's mouth. "Personalised?"

"Of course! Anything for you."

Sunshine is almost touching.

Linyu sighs and puts aside her mug. Somehow she's managed to drink it all, though she is never quite sure how she gets the whole thing down. " _Why_ do you want to have sex?" she asks.

"Because it's supposed to be fun," Sunshine says, but it's after a pause. She's a terrible liar.

"Uh huh." There's never going to be a good time to ask this, and her excuses to delay it are wearing thin. "Sunshine… You're not human, are you?"

Sunshine is silent.

Linyu's heart sinks. She doesn't dare ask for her to say something more, because then she might _know_ she fucked up, rather than suspect.

She goes about her day, finishes the episode of the drama. The lack of commentary echoes uncomfortably.

TRANSFER INITIATED

In the morning, she can't move. Or, she thinks as her higher function pulls itself out of sleep, the parts of her that are metal and circuits, _those_ can't move. "Fuck," she whispers, because her jaw won't budge. "Sunshine?"

She sounds desperate. She's pathetic. Pathetic and malfunctioning.

Her metal hand creeps across her hip. 

"Sunshine?" Linyu gasps, breathless, because her lungs aren't her own.

Her finger, which isn't hers right now, taps twice. DING DING.

She chokes out a laugh in relief, and Sunshine seems to get the message about needing air, her lungs expanding. "I suppose you want to fuck me now?"

Another double tap. 

Linyu _could_ bother herself wondering why Sunshine is so set on this, but somehow caring about the rationale a non-human entity has for controlling most of her body, seemingly only so she can have sex with her, feels beside the point. And it feels nice.

Sunshine works her fingers in and out of her, rubs her thumb over her clit. This is the first time since her accident that she's bothered to appreciate that her genitals remained intact. 

When she comes, it's with barely a shudder, and she finds herself disappointed. She thought she had more than that in her.

She lies still, breathing quietly, trying to ignore the curl of arousal still coiled in her gut.

A minute later, her hand begins to move again.

Sunshine is a delight.


End file.
